The Story the Rings Told
by KJtheELMtree
Summary: Years later, his granchildren would ask him where the rings he wore around his neck came from. Fourshot.
1. His Mother

_1 year old _

Esperanza sighed as she reached the workshop door. Fumbling her baby and her keys, she accidently squashed Leo against her boson as she fitted the correct key into the lock, as evidenced by her son's abrupt squalling. She readjusted her hold on him, muttering an apology to her siblings and to Leo, but not even the bubbling of well-worn voices could calm him.

Sammy Jr. sniffed the air and called, "Hey, Essi, I think Engine 4's waste receptacle needs to be changed," to a gale of laughter. Diego offered to change him, and Cousin Lisa- the only other girl in the shop- tossed him the diaper bag hidden under her desk. Diego caught it, grunting at the extra weight, and carried Leo into the staff-only bathroom. Five minutes later, he came out and yelled, "Essi, what do you usually use to calm him down after he's been changed?"

Esperanza sighed again and unhooked the chain holding her engineer's ring from her neck, making sure to reclasp it before she tossed it to Diego. "Just swing it around in front of his eyes. He'll start trying to go for it instead of focusing on crying." Soon enough, the crying stopped, and her brother came out of the bathroom, tossed her back her necklace, and reported that Leo was asleep in the sink. "So if you need to wash your hands, make sure to remove him first."

Esperanza smiled. The rest of her family may have abandoned her, but her brothers and father and cousin would always be there.

A grunt came from the easy chair where Sammy Sr. slept.

Oh, yeah. And her grandfather, too.

~LINE BREAK~

_Eight years old_

They came to see him in the emergency room, Abuelo and Diego and Miguel and the rest. Abuelo sat in the rocking chair by the window, silently glad that his father wasn't there anymore, while Leo's uncles sat by his bed. Finally Diego spoke.

"They found this," his voice faltered, "under Lisa's desk." Leo was stunned. His mother never took her engineer's ring off, except to shower. But Diego pulled the chained from under his shirt and silently handed the ring to Leo, and Leo took it, equally silent. He held it in his hands for the longest time, until Miguel tugged the necklace from his grasp, then leaned over and clasped it behind his neck.

Diego smiled, just a little, remembering a baby sleeping in a sink. "We thought you might want it."

Leo smiled weakly, but genuinely. "Yeah. I did."

~LINE BREAK OF AWESOMENESS~

This will be a fourshot. Hopefully I'll update soon, but I'm running out of time.

-Beth M


	2. His Lover

The second ring came from Ashley Dawkins, the girl he'd loved and lost.

_Nine years old _

His first foster home had been... painful, to say the least. The other kids were mean, the parents treated him like shattered glass- even the dog seemed to hate him sometimes. So, he ran away.

He was hiding in an alley when a girl came barreling around the corner and smacked him down. Leo gaped at her from the ground; she flushed apologized, and helped him up. "I'm Beth, by the way. What's your-" Leo had heard enough. He was done. He didn't want to hurt this girl like he'd hurt everyone else.

He ran.

Later he remembered that she didn't chase after him at first, but after she'd gotten over her shock, she had. Two streets away from where they'd started, he found himself pinned to the ground wsith a voice above him telling him, "Calm down, wilya? I ain't gonna hurtcha!" Leo struggled as much as he dared before telling her that she was, indeed, hurting him. "Oh. Sorry." The girl- about sixteen or seventeen, he realized now- let him up. "Like I said, I'm Beth McKinney. What's your name?"

"Leo," he said in a whisper.

"Leo." She seemed to be trying out the name. "Leo." Beth smiled tentatively. "I like it." Only then did Leo notice that somewhere behind her eyes she was shattered inside. Only then did he want to help her.

"My name is Beth McKinney," she repeated. "I help people."

~LINE BREAK~

Beth led Leo back to her camp, where a girl about Leo's age sat holding a baby. The girl handed the baby off to Beth, who immediately began nuzzling the baby's forehead and crooning, "Hey, sweetie. Have you been a cutieface today? I bet you have!"

The girl caught Leo's gaze with an eyeroll that summed up a decade's worth of parental incompetence. Beth tore her attention from the baby long enough to notice their interaction and quickly introduced the girl as Ashley, "a street kid, like you, Leo." The baby started crying a little, so Beth wandered a little ways off to calm him down, leaving Ashley and Leo to their own devices.

"So... the baby..." Leo started to ask. "Are you both her kids?"

Ashley shook her head. "Not me. The baby is." She snorted. "Name's Isaac. Still pretty brand-new. Bastard-born, but she loves him to death."

Leo tried to remember what bastard meant, then remembered a conversation between Aunt Rosa and Grandma Carmen a few Thanksgivings back. Not quite sure how that definition fit into Ashley's, he settled for the universal, "Huh?"

Ashley nodded. "Yup. On her own ground, no less."

And that was pretty much the end of _that_ conversation.

~LINE BREAK~

_Twelve years old _

For some unfathomable reason, Beth had been arrested and was spening the night in jail, which the left the five of them- Leo, Ashley, Isaac, and two teenagers who called themselves Kick and Jex- temporarily without adult supervision. Jex had also "found" a stash of beer, which they could freely consume, thanks to the aforementioned lack of supervision. Kick had never touched alcohol and didn't want to start, so she settled for keeping an eye on Izzy while her friends got drunk off their arses.

Thankfully, they were too drunk to remember anything the next morning, but they were still able to piece it together from the fact that Kick and Jex were both blushing like heck.

Before the tension got too thick to handle, Ashley just _happened_ to glance down at the ground and see a plastic toy ring covered in dirt. She presented it to Leo with a bow and a "dear sir" and asking him if he would be so kind as to allow her to grant the gift of this ring.

At that moment, the four of them silently agreed that they would never, _ever_ mention this to Beth.

~LINEY LINEY LINE BREAK~

Two months later, Leo's semi-decent life fell apart when Ashley sat down next to him and told him she'd missed her period.

"Shit," Leo said, hitting his head against the wall behind him. "Shit," he repeated. "I'm going to be a _dad._"

"Unfortunately, yes," Ashley replied.

Leo tried to process this. How could they even afford a baby? And what about diapers? Diapers were _expensive._ So was baby food. And was the world even _ready_ for another Leo Valdez?

"Okay," he told her. "But we're _not_ naming him Leo."

The next day the foster care people found him and took him to a new home, effectively destroying his life.

"So why do you have to take me to a new place?" he asked the social worker. "I was happy!"

"A boy need s a family," the social worker, Dr. Smythesson, replied. She liked her job, even if it gave her almost no time to herself.

She thought the boy- Leonardo Tesla Valdez, according to his profile; disappeared from his first foster home less than a year after arriving, never reported missing, found a year later but slipped straight from the cops' hands- had fallen asleep, but she realized she was wrong when he lifted his head and whispered, "I had a family."

Over the years she'd be working with him, she would keep in touch with one Elizabeth McKinney and one Ashley Dawkins, and was, in fact, the one who told Leo that Tomas James Valdez was born perfectly healthy at 3:32 a.m. Pacific time.

For the rest of her time as a Texas social worker, she'd tell her charges the story of the ring, and of the twelve-year-old boy who never gave up on his first family.

~LINE BREAK OF AWESOMENESS~

And... Done with eight minutes to spare! I'm writing this at lunchtime, so...

Don't expect a lunchtime post for the rest of the week, but this will hopefully be done next Tuesday. Chapter three will be short, but chapter four will be long, but not quite as long as this one, probably.

Sorry for the near-lemon.

-Beth M


	3. His Girlfriend

Leo heard footsteps behind him as Kate walked up to the railing.

"Hey," she said as she leaned in to drop a kiss on his cheek.

"Hey," Leo replied, moving his mouth to meet hers. Kate blinked in surprise but wrapped her arms around him anyway. She pulled back after a little while and started, "After I eneded up on the street…"

Leo glanced at her, his "major-revelation-coming" radar starting to ding. "Yeah?"

"I thought no one would ever love me again, not like Mom loved me. I thought I'd always be alone," she confessed quietly. "I never thought love could be this easy."

Leo smiled up at her. "Who said love was easy?"

~line break~

On Black Friday, Leo snuck himself and Calypso out of camp so he could show her just what she'd missed over the last three thousand years. "And this," he said in his best tour-guide voice, sweeping his arm at the New York Mall, "is called a shopping mall."

"Wow…" Calypso murmured in awe. "How many people _are_ there in the world?"

"Seven billion, five million, eight hundred eighty nine thousand," Leo recited off the top of his head. At Calypso's sharp _are-you-joking_ look, Leo shrugged. "Jake, Nyssa, and Malcolm are working with some people from an online organization on the fact that Earth's going to be overpopulated in about thirty years. Since sterilizing half the population is out of the question, this one guy at NASA suggested orbital habitats, and a kid from Washington suggesting that while we were at it why don't we discover out-of-system space travel? So since she's some bigwig in the Pacific Norwest science fiction community, she got a few authors who write a lot about space travel to help her and a few other people out on designing interstellar spacecraft while the people Jake and Nyssa keep talking with work out the engineering side of it and Malcolm and the NASA people and a bunch of other astrophysicists- shoot, did he tell anyone outside the Athena and Hephaestus cabins that he's already really good at astrophysics? 'Cause if he didn't then forget I just said that- are trying to a) discover if wormholes and hyperspace do in fact exist and b) isolate bits of space that might have wormholes and figure out where the wormholes go to so they'll be that much more prepared when the first interstellar ships have their test runs out to Sirius and Alpha Centauri- Jake's already volunteered for that- and there's yet another team figuring out how to keep the human race alive while that's going on and another deciding how to colonize Mars, and Annabeth and Nyssa are doing both. So there's a lot of statistics getting thrown around Six and Nine because we've all gotten into this, some more than others obviously, and that's how I know exactly how many people there are on planet Earth."

Calypso looked at him strangely, then sighed and said, "I didn't catch half of that, but it doesn't really matter. What are you getting your siblings?"

Leo looked at her blankly, trying to extricate his mind from the depths of space and back to the New York Mall and his conversation with Calypso, but a set of golden arches caught his eye. "Look! I see a McDonald's!" he cried, dragging his girlfriend along with him.

~Line break~

"…and a fish tie and stuffed Nemo doll for Percy, and we got that necklace for Lou Ellen… am I forgetting anyone?" Leo glanced down at his list. Everything was checked off, so he pushed the cart to a checkout stand and glared at the numbers on the screen once they'd rung all the presents up. "We do have enough money, right?" he asked Calypso. Calypso rolled her eyes and reached around him, swiping the credit card he'd begged Annabeth to make for him once he found out about the international card she'd made in Rome. "I should never have taught you how to pick pockets," Leo grumbled to his girlfriend, who shrugged.

On the way out, Leo looked at the little toy-dispensers in the exit area. He looked at the one with the plastic rings, smiled, fed a quarter in, and popped open the container that came out. He strung the ring onto his necklace and mouthed, _I miss you, Kate, _wondering if his words could reach the Underworld.

He and Calypso left Wal-Mart hand in hand.

~LINE BREAK OF AWESOMENESS~

**A/N: Whew! I'm glad that's done! So you'll need to read Fire and Water now. **

**I have barely enough time to post this before I'm logged out. Bye. **

**-Beth M**


	4. His Wife

**Here's the last chapter, like I promised. Sucks that with this the story will be finished, but I hope chapter four measures up to the standard I've set. **

**-Beth M**

~LINE BREAK OF AWESOMENESS~

Killing the last monster was Leo's pleasure. As the gods looked on and the Minotaur blew away in the wind, Jason walked up to Leo and laid a hand on his shoulder, pulling him out of his memories of Kate. "Come on, Leo," Jason told him. "She's gone, and it's time to go home."

Leo nodded, never taking his eyes off of where the Minotaur had been. "Okay. But before we go to Camp Half-Blood, I have a promise to keep."

~LINE BREAK OF AWESOMENESS~

Even before Leo could make out details, he could see the figure standing at the shore. She was waiting for him, holding him to his promise.

Even before the gangplank was fully lowered, Leo was running down it. He nearly knocked Calypso to the ground as he wrapped his arms around her. Her brown eyes widened in shock as he kissed her, as she whispered, _"Leo. You came back."_

Leo cracked a smile. "So I did." He kissed her again and whispered, "So I did..."

His heart beat against hers, her breath wet his cheeks. The moment was perfect, but like all perfect moments, it had to end. Leo was the one to pull away, but he told her to run and pack what she owned while he took down the forge in the woods and all the things they'd built. He insisted that she leave the gardens and the fountain, which Calypso wasn't happy about, but just as a joke he made a sign that read "Gone 4 Good" and stuck it in the sand.

He took her hand as they ran up the gangplank, and as the ship pulled away, he had the honor of kissing her tears away.

~LINE BREAK OF AWESOMENESS~

_Eighteen years old _

It was the third annual "yay-we-won-the-Giant-War-and-didn't-all-die" campfire, and Leo was nervous. Chiron had agreed to let mortal parents through the camp boundaries for the anniversary, and this year, Leo was happier than usual.

Uncle Miguel patted him on the shoulder, and Uncle Diego wished him luck in Morse code. Beth- much to his indignation- gave him a noogie, and Ashley told him that he'd better make this good. With his family's support, Leo walked out onto the arena floor, preparing to ask the most important question of his life.

He had to call for quiet several times before the crowd obliged. With all the campers and parents silent at last, he smiled just a little nervously and turned to where Calypso was sitting.

"The reason I'm embarrassing myself like this," Leo announced- which got a few chuckles; Leo was always embarrassing himself in some way- "is because I need to ask someone a question. Calypso?" Calypso made her way down the arena's bleachers until she was standing next to him.

He found the ring box on the first try, pulled it open, got down on one knew, and said, "Calypso, will you marry me?"

Looking back, he'd find it strange that five words could shape a lifetime. But in that moment, as the campers deafened the gods with their cheers, as the fire soared to the stars, as the answer was certain even before it was given, all Leo had eyes for was his beloved as she whispered for his alone to hear.

"Yes."

And in that moment, everything was perfect.

~LINE BREAK OF AWESOMENESS~

_Epilogue _

_Sixty-two years old _

"Oh, come on, Grandpa! Is that all that happened?" ten-year-old Callie cried.

"Of course not!" her cousin, seven-year-old Tristan, admonished. "After Grandma Callie said yes, a bunch of rockets went off, and Uncle Frank turned into a dragon, and there were Tibetans an' fireworks an'- an' lots of stuff!"

Leo wasn't sure where his grandson had gotten the Tibetans from. He made a mental note to tell Roxanne not to let her son read Terry Pratchett.

Twenty-two-year-old Sammy- there had always been a Sammy Valdez, going all the way back to Leo's great-grandfather's great-granddad, even if, in Leo's daughter's case, Sammy was a Samantha- poked his head around the doorframe. "Hey, Grandpa, Grandma says to tell you the roast's on."

"All right," Leo told Tomas's son. "Tell her I'll be there in a bit."

Around the Thanksgiving table, the entire family sat: Sally and Paul, Susan Chase, Matthew and Bobby Chase and their families, Nico and Reyna, the seven and Calypso and their children (not to mention the grandkids), Beth and her husband, Ashley and _her _ husband, Kick and Jex and everyone else lucky enough to be part of the seven's family.

Sally, as the oldest, started saying grace. Leo took his wife's hand under the table, and with his other hand, he fingered the four rings on the chain around his neck: an engineer's ring, a ring that was a promise broken, a ring that was a promise kept, and one that was a promise made: four rings for four women, his mother, his lover, his girlfriend, and his wife.

And when he died, the necklace would be left on his grave, as a reminder of the life of the child set down to nap in the sink of a long-burned-downed workshop.

~LINE BREAK OF AWESOMENESS~

**And so ends another story. I hope you enjoyed the ride- I certainly did. **

**Leo's kids: Tomas, Samantha, Roxanne, and Esperanza. **

**Leo's grandkids: Tristan, Sammy, Esperanza (Essi), Callie, and Leah. **

**Goodbye my people! **

**-Beth M**


End file.
